Trouble Every Day (2001)

In Phenomenology of the Spirit, Hegel wrote about desire as a form of eating. Perhaps that is what Claire Denis had in mind when she made Trouble Every Day, a horror movie that is unlike most other horror movie in dodging silly effects for a strangely haunting story about sexuality. I watched the film a couple of weeks ago, and it's still hard to shrug it off, especially the score by the wonderful group Tindersticks. So what to expect? Trouble Every Day is one of Claire Denis' more open-ended movies. It's quite a task even to describe what the main themes are. It's a film that disturbs and subverts but at the same time it's a strangely alluring affair.

When you think about Paris, do you think about wonderful little alleys and cozy cafés, romance and sunsets? Forget all this, Denis throws you into a gray, cold landscape. Remember what Nicolas Roeg did to Venice in his eerie horror flick Don't Look Now from 1973. Denis film has much in common with that film, it digs and digs, layer after layer, and its digging process requires all of cinema's aspects: how frames are designed, use of close-ups, colors, editing (if there's one dimension of Denis' films I would say are easily overlooked, its how different scenes are juxtaposed in a way that defies linear storytelling). 

Trouble Every Day has the structure and geography of a nightmare, the sort of nightmare when things and places are several things at the same time - that's another reason why the film is so hard to pin down, it doesn't really seem like a film that you could reassemble into a neat package of ideas. A newlywed couple arrives in Paris. The guy is obsessed with looking for a doctor with whom he has collaborated (there are references to unorthodox experiments but we don't know much). A woman coos a string of lovers - and devours them. She is married to the doctor the American man is looking for. The doctor has locked her into his house, but she finds ways to escape. What's going on between these people? There's little dialogue, and plenty of mood. It's rare to see sex depicted so gloomily as it is here: sex is killing, or a desire to kill, to feed on the other, but it is also related to affliction and disease. It's not fun to watch Trouble Every Day, it's not in any sense entertaining (the performances are flat, there is no plot and the violence is not supposed to look cool). But what sort of carnal being are on display here? As in other movies, Denis explores the body, and what she finds there in this film is a strange and sometimes repulsive site for urges, but not urges int the sense of elusive psychological drives - Trouble Every Day leaves almost no room for psychology. At the same time, however, it's also a film about our relations to each other, about fear of hurting one another. But where does the film end up in displaying erotic relations as involving a deep sense of horror and an eerie dimension of pleasure? I was surprised by my reaction to this movie. Instead of being appalled, or shocked, I was moved by the melancholia that the images and the music conveyed. 

 Agnés Godard's cinematography is masterful, as always.

35 Shots of Rum (2008)

Claire Denis is famous for making sensual and enigmatic movies. In this sense, 35 Shots of Rum is not a typical Clair Denis movies - even though it would be wrong to say that she makes only one type of movie; actually Denis is a rather versatile director. However, 35 Shots of Rum is characterized by something that is typical for all Denis' film: lack of sentimentality and a refusal to mold a film in accordance with familiar patterns.

A widowed train driver lives with his daughter, who is a student. They are close, even though there are also some tensions. From the get-go, we realize that these two people have a deep love for each other. The film follows the daily rituals and habits of these two, and the neighbors with whom they socialize. Here, habits don't evoke static repetition, but rather, we see people doing things in the middle of life where subtle changes and sometimes even drastic decision take place. Agnés Godard's cinematography works wonderfully here, focusing on movement not as going from A to B but as spatial dramas (watch the beautiful images of trains at night or the scenes with rice steamers) - this aspect is similar to other Denis movie, Beau Travail in particular (where movement becomes choreography). 35 Shots of Rum is not an abrasive film, but it works with concentration - everything is important. In this film, the nature of particular relationships are never spelled out verbally - Denis trusts us to look and see, as the relationships are established through various scenes in ordinary life, rather than as conflicts and confrontations. The relation between the two main characters and one of the neighbors, a taxi driver, is particularly haunting to watch. Denis manages to convey very subtle emotions, grief and loneliness, intimacy and a need to let go, without retreating to scenes in which everything is supposedly explained and resolved. I really feel that this movie invites you or immerses you in an extremely rich world - a world of spatiality, sound and emotions (and the political is always present, but in a quiet way, in this domestic drama). There are turning points, yes, but as in real life, their meaning is excessive (the scene in a small café is fantastic). As a portrait of a family reaching crossroads, 35 Shots of Rum is remarkable. The director herself talked about her admiration of Ozu and here that really shows.

And yes, Tindersticks made the musical score, and what an amazing complement that turns out to be!

Child's Pose (2012)

If you've been following Romanian cinema during the last few years you know that there are several directors working with realism in a way that feels fresh and compelling. Child's Pose (dir. Calin Peter Netzer) offers a chilly glimpse into the life of the ridiculously rich; the film discloses a country deeply marked by class differences, and it also shows a certain group of rich people so indulged by their easy lifestyle that they are alienated from reality - they can bribe their way into any project they take on, even when these projects comprise human relationships. Netzer's take on family drama is a dark and raw one, focusing on how affection intermingles with manipulation and blackmailing. A mother desperately tries to help and assist her son, who is to blame for a car crash in which one person was killed. The relation between the mother and the son is a catastrophe, and throughout the film, the mother tries to reach out to her son, but this hardly comes out as the pure love of a mother. Corruption abounds, on several different levels (social and personal). What I like about Netzer's approach is that the film rarely gets preachy or indignant, even though the portrait of the upper class contains many satirical moments (some of which relates to the characters' attempts to appear culturally sophisticated or as "being in the same boat as everybody else"). At the same time as this is a film about class, it's also a film about grief, a subject the director takes just as seriously, even though he tackles it with his own peculiar clinical cinematic style (all shots, even when they are busy, bear the feel of a penetrating glance).

I also want to mention Luminita Gheorghiu's performance - she acts the role of the mother, and I can't recall when I've seen such a complex display of iciness and emotionality; Gheorghiu really lets us take a stand on what we would regard as a matter of emotional bribery and what is to be considered as a spontaneous reaction.

On my way (2012)

Emmanuelle Bercot's On My Way is a lighthearted road movie, a sympathetic drama/comedy about family relations and reconciliation. It's not a masterpiece in any sense, but I found the film quite entertaining, even though it's not the kind of movie that will remain in your mind for long. Well, it seems fair to say that On My Way is a harmless film that has its good moments (if you can stand the clichés), most of which stem from Catherine Deneuve's sweet acting. Deneuve plays a restaurant owner who's had enough. She hits the road and of course she delves into several adventures. The denouement of the film plants itself in the middle of every expectation you may have about what a French movie should be like.

Black and White (2010)

Think about directors like Rohmer. He managed to make a string of easy-going movies about everyday life - in a very bourgeois setting. I can stand his movies, well, I happen to adore some of them. But it takes a good director to pull off that kind of movie, and I'm afraid Black and White, directed by Ahmet Boyacioglu wasn't one of these films, even though it had its strong aspects, and even though its offbeat focus on ordinary life was charming, even moving at times. The problem was just that the film remained lofty, conventional - I was never overwhelmed, worried or taken aback - this film played it safe, and the effect it had on me was slight. Most of the story takes place in a bar in which a group of loyal patrons hang out, drink and philosophize about love and life. At first, they seem to be a miserable bunch, but things brighten up, and the message of the film is that life goes on, no matter how static it may have seemed up 'til now - change is always possible. After the film (screened at Sodankylä film festival) the director explained that most of the characters are based on people he knows. It is obvious that these portraits contain a great deal of affection. But for all this, the film never takes off, there is no real urgency there, no lasting images; despite his aspiration to keep the film as close to reality as possible, the big issue I had with it is that it felt too general, too much craving for stories that everybody could relate to and recognize.   

Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

If you are fascinated by Italian horror movies from the late 70's or the early 80's Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio offers you a real treat; an ironical but also sympathetic meditation on film-making, chauvinism and creative imagination. A British sound engineer arrives in an eerie film studio in Italy. A seedy film is about to be made, mostly by good looking ladies being placed in booths, where they scream their lungs out. The challenge of the Brit is to transform this into movie magic, but one problem here is that the gentleman is used to making nature documentaries and the tasks he is commissioned to do abhors him. Strickland has plenty of fun showing us how the cheesy Italian horror movies might have been made - the most ingenious tricks are used (involving an assortment of vegetables) to create just the right sound of smashed bones or mushy flesh. The contrast between the bumbling Brit and the chauvinistic Italians of course plays on cultural stereotypes, but well, this is not a tract on national characteristics. The funny thing about Berberian Sound Studio is of course that it focuses on a much overlooked aspect of movies - sounds - using images that are both offbeat and sometimes eerily evocative, even when they border on the nonsensical (I must admit that the end could have been skipped). Weirdos, you'll like this one. 

Fill the Void (2012)

I watched Fill the Void (dir. Rama Burshtein) on a rainy night at the Sodankylä film festival. Perhaps this testifies to my flawed attention, but in my view, the film was overly ambiguous, and not ambiguous in the sort of way that opens up for several readings. In this case, the ambiguousness made it hard to relate to the film. Obviously, the director sees a certain urgency in a story she wants to tell. But I was never sure what this urgency was.

The story is set in Tel Aviv among a group of ultra orthodox Hasidic Jews. From what I've read, the aspiration of the director was to make a film about this group of people from the inside. I suppose that this does not exclude the possibility of a critical perspective, and this is what makes the film interesting. If anything, Fill the Void reminds us that no culture is uniform. If it criticizes certain cultural patterns, how should this be understood, should it be understood as a distinction between the religious and the cultural, or as a distinction between limiting cultural norms and a craving for independence? To be honest, I'm not sure at all, some things would speak in favor of the opposite of the latter: faith is also a way of life, not an inner conviction. The central character is Shira, 18 years old, an age at which you are expected to get married, and marriages are arranged. Everything changes when Shira's sister dies. The sister had a husband and a child. The widower is under press to re-marry, and some grief-stricken family members see Shira as a suitable match. Shira herself seems to repress her feelings; the only thing she says is that she wants to do the right thing. And it is here that my confusion appears. Is the film supposed to be a love story, so that Shira has fallen for her sister's husband, or are we to think that Shira would rather not marry the guy, but complies with the conventions to act the role of the dutiful daughter, thus repressing her desire to marry someone she loves? In part, we get to see things from the other party's perspective, the man Shira would marry tries to elicit her "real feelings" and maybe this makes my own thoughts trail off into familiar Romance Story territory (in which the usual path is to show women who are not clear about who they are, they need a male perspective). But the ending of the film thwarts this interpretation.

Fill the Void is a film that tries hard to evoke emotions, feelings that do rarely come to the surface, feelings that can only be hinted at. Ambivalence is all over, and it is painful for the characters to bear. In this, the film is rather successful, especially in how it focuses on the awkward meetings between two people who have been chosen to be a good match for each other. On the downside, the film is at times too overblown, so wrapped up within these mixed emotions that it is hard to navigate - where exactly are we heading? The excessive use of certain stylistic devices (shallow focus, soft edges, close-ups, emotional music) also felt a bit contrived.

Wadjda (2012)

If I got it right, Wadjda (dir. Haifaa Al-Mansour) is the first film entirely shot in Saudi Arabia. And the director is a woman. What is more, Wadjda is clearly a feminist film about gender and power. Despite some unfortunate choices where the crew opts for conventional narrative solutions, this is a powerful film with a strong story told by means of simple and effective cinematic devices (one reference could be Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple, a similarly sympathetic and focused film). Wadjda is a kid whose big dream is to buy a bike. Her mother consider it out of the question: a girl would never ride a bike. Wadjda is stubborn. She enrolls in a Quran competition where she can win a decent amount of money to buy the bike herself. The film follows Wadjda's struggles with a conservative society. There are no good and bad people here, just people being afraid of being different, or opening themselves to others. These fears are disclosed not through some extra-ordinary events but in the day-to-day life comprising family struggles, urban living and the school system. The merit of the film is, as I said, it's simplicity. It follows the sneaker-clad Wadjda on her way to school, on her interaction with other pupils, with her friend Abdullah or with her mother. Her unwillingness to comply with collective patterns rarely gets a sugar-coated heroic tone - she is a person who reacts and acts (the Dardenne brothers' Rosetta comes to mind). Many scenes contain an interesting ambiguousness, such as a very moving scene in which Wadjda is reading a section from the Quran, a section she has chosen herself; this scene contains no stereotypical critique of religion as being conservative as such. Another aspect I liked about the film is its close attention to the urban surrounding in which Wadjda spends her day-to-day life. The film abounds with urban non-places as well as images of hectic street life. And this all is interesting because of the film's content. The city is both a place of limitation where certain things are forbidden but it is also shown as a space for play, creativity and defiance.

Goodbye, How Are You? (2009)

I watched Goodbye, How Are You (dir. Boris Mitic), a film comprising 25 (or how many were they?) sardonic jokes, or maybe aphorism would be a better word, and my constant reaction was that I did not get the point. These jokes were grim, sarcastic, dark - I could sometimes get a glimpse of what was supposed to be subversive or funny, but the film remained elusive to me. The film takes on many themes - history, wars, violence - and it often lands in the absurd, the skewed. A voice-over drones on, telling us these stories while the images shown often juxtapose the journalistic with the almost surreal. As a collage, this works well, and it is perhaps a film I should give another chance.

Play (2011)

In my opinion, Ruben Östlund is perhaps the most interesting movie director making films in Sweden today. His films explore social situations and the viewer is put in an as uncomfortable position as the protagonists, but this is not to say that Östlund makes some kind of social pornography of the type that we are supposed to take a lot of pleasure in looking at other's misery. One of the recurring themes in Östlund's movies is how fear is handled in encounters between people. He investigates how fear is transformed into a persistent will to make everything all right, to act as if nothing happened, as if the uncomfortable things can be mastered somehow. These topics are also apparent in Östlund's latest movie, Play. It is a difficult movie but not in the sense that it is difficult to follow the story or that it contains a lot of violence. It's difficult to watch because it forces you to think about what all of these situations mean, how you react to them - Östlund's films feel personal in how they seem aimed not at an idealized, statistical audience ("this is what people normally want to see"). He puts some acute questions in front of you, and it is your responsibility to think about what you see. But like Michael Haneke, I am not always sure whether Östlund's films express a moral clarity. As you can probably guess, his films have an open-ended character. They never conclude in clear-cut solutions or narrative resolutions.

Some reviewers and debaters accused Play of being racist. Even though I can see where that worry is coming from, I don't feel that does justice to the film. The question is there, however, what does race mean in the film, in what way is being black important or not important here? But this is not the only questions. There is also another story, a story about reactions that have a racist structure to them that the film reveals as an aspect of a tangled situation.

Through a very sophisticated series of techniques that play on psychological responses, a group of boys makes another group of boys handle over all of their valuable. It all starts with the first group telling one boy that he has just the same kind of mobile phone that has been stolen from another boy's brother. Can he prove that he didn't steal it? The boys bribe, play good cop/bad cop, they talk and persuade, they use force and elicit fear. Among themselves, they are not at all a coherent group. One of them is beaten up for acting differently. The other group of course try to flee from the situation, they try to make all of this end so that they can continue their day in the normal way. Their actions express insecurity, and this is exploited. The other boys persist. Slowly, some of their resistance starts to wither away. They get tired. They submit. They react spontaneously in ways that make them play along. The situation is a perpetual state of social bribery. At one point, they all "cooperate", but in the next scene, it is back to the mix of resistance and lack of defiance.The black kids play with racial stereotypes: the gangsta, the dangerous black, the unruly youth, the victim. The other gang are confounded, they don't know what to do.

The digital camera remains static. It is usually placed far from the actors. We see the situation playing out against the backdrop of urban non-places: a shopping mall, a tram, a train station and in one scene the group has ended up seemingly in the middle of nowhere. I think of Östlund's short film about a robbery, another one, in which he uses a security camera, or the style of a security camera. Östlund juxtaposes the apparent neutrality - the observational camera - of the image with its almost violent non-neutrality - these images are in no way neutral. My own reaction oscillates. Is this a mere artistic trick or does it have a good point?

Some have interpreted the film as a movie about political correctness. One plays along because one fears that otherwise one will be complicit in racism. I think this makes sense. But the film also ties in with Ruben Östlund's other films - in what way do people react to oppression or threats by a form of passivity, so that the only wish is to get it over with, the wish that the others will simply disappear? Play and his film The Involuntary explores what happens when somebody reacts to a difficult situation by being paralyzed. 

I don't think Östlund's film makes any statement about race or black people. What he does, I think, is to look at the fears that a racist society gives rise to, and that these fears have many sides. Here, racism is connected with the fear of meeting the other, of looking her in the eyes, treating the other as a human being rather than "a black kid who probably wants to make trouble". In this sense, racism is not just some unfounded conceptions or stereotypes - it is also intermingled with attitudes, the concrete encounter and what it makes us into.

While I write this, I realize that I will probably say different things about this movie in a few months. It's a film that has to be re-thought, digested. I should also mention that the film has many problems. Its smartness is one - it creates a tangle which creates a sort of mirroring effect - one responds with the same kind of insecurity and fear that the characters express - and this effect is so contrived and calculated that it no longer can morally have the effect of self-reflection. Another problem involves some specific scenes, especially towards the end, where Östlund tries to bring home the point about behavior that seems 'decent' but that just makes things even worse - here things gets too obvious, too schemed.